Only my second ever thread so bear with me! I just wanted to say that I love those photos you get from the plane as you travel off to an exotic location somewhere...and I wondered if anyone else had any to share! The three I took below were only on a small compact camera, so the picture quality isn't great (especially since I had to resize them), but the views were incredible.

This was the engine of course!

This was where we flew over my house, which looks out directly over this bay

And this was the sunset just over the coast of Egypt from 35,000ft.

Anyway they ain't great but you get the idea!

Chris

Last edited by ellyattc on Sat Dec 22, 2007 7:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

The last one is beautiful. You can even see the curvature of the earth!!!

Thanks! Yeah I noticed that when I set it as my desktop background, and I wondered at first if it might have been just distortion because of the lens, but I checked my "land" photos, and the horizons were straight on them! Anyway I didn't realise you could see curvature from normal comercial aircraft, but I will look out for it in future .

...I didn't realise you could see curvature from normal commercial aircraft...

Sort of. With all the lack of rigour of any "back of a fag packet" calculation, assume a horizon 180 miles away with an aircraft
6 miles up (rough and ready but the order of magnitude is about right). As you are looking down on a horizon which is a circle
of radius 180 then, at 30° from the direction the camera is pointing in, if you drop a perpendicular from the horizon at that
30° offset to the line of sight of the camera then the intersection is about 160 miles away (180*cos(30)). Draw a straight line
from the horizon 180 miles away to both the aircraft 6 miles up and the ground immediately below it. The angle subtended
has a tangent of 6/180 which is about 1.909°. Similarly, the angle subtended from a point 160 miles away is about
2.148°. This is a difference of about ¼°, which is about half the angular diameter of the Sun or Moon.

The effect in your shot looks to be about equivalent to the full angular diameter of the Sun. If your lens can see to 40°
either side of central then a full angular diameter is about right and I've made myself unpopular because nobody likes a
smart arse.

So, what was the field of view of your lens? Any less than 40° and we might have to blame a little of the effect on
either optically bad window glass or my rubbish calculation.

Well, 28mm focal length on a 35mm film camera corresponds roughly to a horizontal field of view of 66° (±33°) so maybe
there's a tiny bit of distortion from the window glass in play as well as curvature of the Earth. Certainly, to my eye, the
horizon does seem to take a slightly more rapid dip down near the left hand edge.

Ah I had a look at that last picture in full, Oleg (?), and I love those blues as they gain depth up towards space.

I know I can't explain this in words but there is just something about those photos being on the edge of space that I jsut love

Oh and to Bob, thanks for the information, I know what you mean about the drop on the left side, but I checked using a grid alignment, and both sides are actually the same; I think the illusion is actually created by the wing blocking out part of the view from the right side.

But anyway its probably 40% distortion 60% curvature to me at the moment, whatever it is it makes a good affect!

Thanks for that reply Gordon, I've resized the photos now and they stay within the screen

Anyway I just thought I'd add a couple more...the first is just of me and my two step brothers, so you knew who I am! I am the one at the top in the middle, looking stlightly concerned that I'd packed everything!

The second photo I found whilst browsing through is of mountains in Greece or Turkey I think. Anyway what I loved about this photo, if you have a look, is that you can notice what appears at first to be reflection off the window, but is actually the fuselage of the plane reflecting off that shiny engine!